Why did they resign?
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Many of these resignations appear to be from material difference.
Being down a single pawn is enough to resign for many GM games.
Jul 9, 2007
0
#4
Yeah, GMs don't often play all the way to mate... if they have a hopeless position, they'll resign, because they know their opponent is strong enough to force the win. For example, in the Spassky vs Bronstein game, if black plays 23...Kh8 to get out of check, then white could play Rxf8+ (removing the defender of g6), and whether black recaptures with his rook or queen, white can play Ng6+, forking the black queen and king. That is totally losing (mate follow in 2 moves), and so are all of the other moves black has, so he resigned.
I don't think amateurs should resign after losing material, though. Unlike GMs, we make a lot of mistakes, and I've won games after blundering away a rook before. So, I think all amateurs should play all the way to mate.
In the Tigran Petrosian vs. Wolfgang Unzicker game, black's queen is under attack and, there is the threat of 56. Nd7+ winning material.
in the final one.. who resigned? if karpov resigned, it could be the fact that there are too many threats to counter them all, and i dont see seirawan resigning in this position because of the pawns.
Jul 3, 2008
0
#6
from the final position in game 1 (torre-lasker) it looks to me that black cannot defend the d-pawn, forcing resignation.
from game 2(spassky-bronstein) Black is hopelessly trapped. If, for instance, ...g6, then what i see is Rxf8, and the onslaught continues from there with a Qg6 then eventually Nf7 winning the queen. If 23...Kh8 then 24. Rxf8 wins, if not the game then at least the queen.
Game 3(petrosian-unzicker) Black just simply loses material. While the black queen is attacked, white threatens Rxd8 Bxd8, Nd7 and eventually Nxb6. Unzicker wasted time by not realizing what Petrosian was doing. I mean, didn't he see that white moved his king to the queenside? Because for 5 straight moves, the king moved from one side of the board to the other in preparation for a kingside attack. In my opinion, Unzicker should have done the same thing, or at least prepare an adequate defense for this plan.
Game 4(seirawan-karpov) black cannot stop the queen from getting to the 8th rank. Black has to stop the queen from getting to g8 and the only way is to play Rf7. White simply responds with Qe8 and black is faced with what I call "dilemma" squares( in this case g8 and h8). That is, if black chooses one square to defend, white goes to the other square to mate.
I liked the spassky game, but the seirawan game has me a bit disturbed because it was karpov who suffered the loss, having what appeared to be the initiative in this game. If this was an amateur that seirawan was facing( and not a former world champion) I probably would not feel as bad for seirawan's victim.
So I've been looking up games played by some of the past GM's and I've gotten really confused when one player resigned in many of the games. I try playing them out but don't make any headway. What are the moves that would have been played after resignation?